The Book Thief

The Book Thief
by Marcus Zusak
2005
Alfred A. Knopf, New York
550 pages
ISBN: 978-0-375-84220-7

I can't remember who told me that I should read The Book Thief. I wish that I did, so that I could thank them. It was a nameless, "Oh, I've been meaning to read that." That made me request it from the CPL.

Seriously, this book is beautiful. It is a powerful, poetic novel, written from the perspective of Death. Yes, that's "capital D" Death. He informs us that he doesn't carry a scythe, and only wears a long black cloak when it's cold. He is, in a myriad of other ways, not what you might expect. Gentle, careful, exhausted.

I've started this next paragraph four times. I can't seem to do it justice. What is this book about? I haven't been able to find words that don't seem oversimplistic and dull compared to what you'll find on these pages, and so I've decided not to try, I'm going to let the narrator tell you.

"It's the story of one of those perpetual survivors - an expert at being left behind.
It's just a small story really, about, among other things:
*A girl
*Some words
*An accordionist
*Some fanatical Germans
*A Jewish fist fighter
*And quite a lot of thievery" (page 5)

Zusak does a wonderful job of giving Death a voice: a language and grammar all his own. The language is delightful, musical; it swings effortlessly from subtle to cutting. Death is untethered to time, but attached to colors. While the story has a beginning, middle and end, you will not find pure linear narration here. We know parts of end from the very beginning. It's not subtle. Characters you love will die. This is Nazi Germany after all, and Death is your narrator. He knows this story because he was around a lot.

Yes, characters you love will die, and though you have been warned, by Death himself, you will be surprised. You might find yourself, as I did, trying to cry quietly so as not to wake your sleeping bed mate. It's crushingly sad, no matter how you are warned.

Really though, you should read this. There are hundreds of reviews, if you need more convincing. I am not alone in my praise. You can find the plot summary on the back of the book, or Amazon, or whatever book-summarizing and reviewing website you choose, but it won't tell you much. The book thief steals because she loves books, and gradually, because she comes to understand their power. And in the end, this book, both in form and in tale, is about the power of words over us silly humans.


NOTE: This book has been labeled/marketed/shelved in your local library and bookstore as "Young Adult/Teen/Children" I have thoughts on that. They're going to come up in a later blog entry. I will only say here that if you let that dissuade you, you are doing yourself a disservice.

World Without End

World Without End
by Ken Follett
2007
1014 pages
ISBN: 978-0-451-22499-6
Purchased at Bookman/Bookwoman

The sequel to Follett's excellent The Pillars of the Earth lived up to expectations. This is an excellent historical epic that reads much quicker than its thousand pages would suggest. Follett again sets his tale primarily in Kingsbridge, England, but this time we see it in the 14th century. He succeeds in painting a vivid picture of the challenges of life in this distant past with well placed details. The novel follows the lives of multiple characters, but Follett is very successful in interweaving their stories and passing from one to another quickly enough to allow the reader to keep track of all of them but not so quickly that the story seems fragmented. Overall the book is a delightful read. Highly recommended.

Sarum

So I've read several of Rutherfurd's books in the past, and they all seem to follow the basic format of picking a location (past examples, London (in, well, London) and Dublin (in The Princes of Ireland and The Rebels of Ireland)) and following several families through the history of the location from the earliest people to something like the present day. In Sarum this location is the area surrounding modern-day Salisbury, England. The book is enormous, over 1000 pages, but it's still an enjoyable read. Some of the sections are far more entertaining than others, there were certainly points when I wondered what the point of a particular scene was, but overall, the novel was fun to read. I was disappointed with the ending, but I suppose nobody's perfect.

One of the things that I really enjoy about these books are the history lessons that I get out of reading them. I've said it before I know, but I really do think that I know more history from reading historical fiction than I do from actually reading history... but perhaps it is just that I remember it better when it's plot points and not testable knowledge. Who knows. It's still good stuff.

Want more information on this book, or to see what else I've been reading?
Check out The 2009 booklist.

The Queen's Fool

The Queen's Fool
By Philippa Gregory


If you want Maggie to remember history. Just put it all into a nice story with some memorable characters and she'll have it all wrapped up.

For example. By reading The Queen's Fool, I am now clear on the succession of English royalty following Henry VIII (a character himself in The Other Boleyn Girl the book that made that little period of history clearer) all the way through to Elizabeth I.

This story starts after Henry is dead and his son Edward VI is on the throne (in name only, he's a child, so the country is being ruled by a regency council.) The narrator of the novel is Hannah Verde, a Jewish girl, who with her father has fled Spain to hide (and fake Christianity) in England after her mother was burned at the stake in the Spanish Inquisition. Hannah also happens to be able to occasionally see the future, a useful skill at a time like this.

She meets Robert Dudley (central character of The Virgin's Lover the other Gregory novel that taught Maggie history) and he takes Hannah to court to be a holy fool to the king, who is young and clearly ill. After a short while, she is sent, basically as a spy for the Dudleys, to the Princess Mary. Hannah spends the rest of the novel as friend and confidant to Mary both as princess and as Queen and later also to Princess Elizabeth.

What's great about this book is not only the history. (Edward VI to Jane Grey (8 days) to Mary I (aka Bloody Mary) to Elizabeth I... better than I knew it for AP European History.) But the complexity of the characters. Hannah is a brilliantly created, and genuine seeming person. A young woman who is forced to reconcile herself with conflicting feelings and web of complicated loyalties. The story takes her from a young girl who questions the value of her Jewish faith in the face of what it has already cost her, to a grown woman who agrees wholeheartedly to commit to a life as "One of the Children is Israel." She is loyal to Robert Dudley from the beginning, and for a time also in love with him. But she also has a deep and undying love for Mary, even in the face of the religious persecution that she inflicts upon England in a quest to return it to the Catholic Church. Hannah even shows affection, loyalty, a sense of duty and a deep admiration for the Princess Elizabeth, even as she plots to overthrow the Queen that she so loves.

But that fits. It's a complicated character for a complicated time. A character faced with a deep religious challenge at a time when nobody in England really knew what they were allowed to believe, or if they were safe in their practice. A character faced with conflicting loyalties in a time of political turmoil. It works. I loved it.

Gregory paints all the characters, even the royalty, as human, flawed but likable. Perhaps none more so than Mary. It's an interesting choice for a Queen who is known for executing large numbers of her own people. Yet, in this novel at least, Mary is sincere. She wishes nothing but happiness for England, and her devotion to the Church and returning England to her faith comes from a devout belief that her view of God is the true one. She is a woman tortured by the complications of court from her youngest days, when Henry VIII tossed her mother aside for Anne Boleyn. The story makes it clear how she has progressed from a girl forced to swear the oath calling herself a bastard to a woman who can rally the troops to her cause as Queen not once, but twice. But the novel also shows how her strength is tested, and how she is changed from someone so loved by her people that she can easily put down a rebellion to a queen that was so feared. How she moves from someone so merciful that she initially refused to execute Jane Grey, who was put on the throne before her, to someone who would so willingly bring down a brutal inquisition on her own people. The strength that she shows when she is ready to fight for her throne is contrasted sharply to the broken sobbing woman that we see before she dies. It's a compelling portrait.

The side plot to all the royal activity is the love story between Hannah and the young Jewish man that she is betrothed to. It's a nice story, and while it certainly serves to help us see how Hannah grows, to me it did not ring with the same intensity as her times at court. Still charming though.

In short, I liked this as much as the other two Gregory novels, both books that I could not put down. Reading this makes me want to go through and read all the books in this unofficial series in order, to see how the continuity flows. It seems now that Gregory has made the English royalty into complicated and beautiful characters spanning from young Catherine of Aragon to Elizabeth in what's now five books. We'll see when I get around to that, I'm certainly not allowed to buy the ones that I haven't read yet right now. ;-)

One book down, nine more to go before I can make my triumphant return to Barnes and Noble.

P.S. I'm going to try this label thing and see if it works. We'll sort by genre I think.